we are not standing, we are falling
by Gray Doll
Summary: Years later, the world is crumbling around her but he writes: 'I love you, Teresa'. And she writes back. [JanexLisbon]


**we are not standing, we are falling**

There are gunshots; blood; the gleam of lamplight reflected on a steel blade; screams.

Her valiant team and the once-smiling monster, gone; all of them broken, all of them dead (and still dying) at her feet.

She hears it as if from miles away, even though he's standing right beside her – the faint sound the gun makes as it slips from a trembling hand that is not her own and falls to the floor.

And then there's quiet.

There is no victory march at the end. There are no trumpets to signal the fall of the red curtain of a decade-long play. There is no song, there is no cheering, there are no fireworks and there is no sunset.

She closes her eyes.

In the end, there is only them.

**.**

**.**

This is the history that does not live on ink and the news:

Red John is determined to rip apart their lives in a rage of blood when his organization is broken and torn at the seams. Grace and Wayne are the first to fall in their defense of little Benjamin, lives snuffed out like candles, like so many more forgotten flames. Cho dies for his mother, and closes his eyes with her name at his lips.

But in the end, they get him – they were always supposed to get him, she and her broken, golden consultant (her partner, friend, and her so much more), standing side by side, each with a gun in their hand.

Among the smoke and the blood and the ashes, Jane sits, _falls_, and is alone.

But then, so is she.

Hours pass, or maybe it is days, before he speaks to her, and it's a small, cracked sound drawn from his lips like a prayer. "Stay with me," he says to her.

But she is no longer useful now that everything's over, she thinks, and tries very hard not to cry. She does not go to him. She does not crumble for him again, she does not let him wrap his arms around her, hard and gilded like a cage.

She takes a deep breath to keep her voice from trembling, and says, "I'm leaving."

_I have to_. "You have to understand."

He says nothing. His outstretched arm drops to his side. She turns and walks the other way, eyes burning against the cool winter breeze.

A few moments later, he does the same.

**.**

**.**

(One year later, he is still not dead. He's carrying on. She lets her breath out slowly through parted lips, and convinces herself that's what she wanted all along. To give him a chance to move on.)

**.**

**.**

She runs into Summer Edgecombe one and a half years later, in a little corner cafe in Raleigh.

The girl grins with her teeth, lips bright pink and blooming, brown eyes still young but oh so tired, that crafted kind of mischief hanging from her face. "So, word is you finally busted that psycho killer."

Lisbon plasters on a smile and sips her coffee. "We did."

Summer gives her hand a gentle squeeze, and Lisbon can sense the ghost of a past love, hanging around her still. She doesn't need to know about his death, Lisbon doesn't have to tell her. She doesn't do that any more. "And you're in vacation with Goldilocks to celebrate?"

She tenses, sets down her cup, and looks out the window.

**.**

**.**

(_She decides to travel the world. She's always wanted to do that_.)

She sees Jane in Peru.

In Paris.

In Cairo.

She sees Jane in the shadow of cathedrals, in the fall of sunset light in Central Park, in the shapes of trees in the forests of the Irish coasts, in the spaces between the columns of ancient Greek temples, and in the backs of strangers limned in gold in a Russian theater.

At night she wakes up in different hotel rooms, between alien sheets, men with golden hair lying right next to her and her breath catches, catches and stops and hours pass before she can lie down again, before she's alone in the room again.

_I did not say goodbye_, she remembers.

**.**

**.**

She meets Summer for coffee every few months, when she returns to the States, and this time she doesn't bother pretending.

"Did you truly love him?" she asks Summer now, and the younger woman gives a small smile.

"I suppose I did." Her own question, Summer doesn't ask; but Lisbon can hear it, the words worming themselves into the hole in her head, _Do _you_ truly love Patrick?_

In the privacy of yet another hotel room, she lets herself cry – for the first time in three years, because she does.

**.**

**.**

("I will never love anybody the way I loved him," the blonde protagonist says, and Lisbon stuffs more popcorn into her mouth to keep herself from biting her lip, or sighing, or screaming.

But the other girl, played by an actress with dark hair and weary eyes, says, "No. But you get over it."

In the end, she turns off the TV. Lisbon always hated romantic dramas.)

**.**

**.**

Four years later, the world is crumpling around her, and he writes:

_I love you, Teresa_.

She doesn't turn on the lights when she sits down on the floor and writes back – no phones, no e-mails. It just wouldn't be right.

On a bright Saturday morning, Rome is bustling with life. Among colorful tourists and loud locals, a dark-haired woman lets a golden man wrap his arms around her, because his embrace no longer feels like a cage.

Just around the corner, a seven year old girl's blue eyes widen, and she tugs at her mother's skirts, "Mama, they look like they're out of a movie!"

**.**

**.**

She does not get a white picket fence and a St Bernard's, a big SUV and laughing, adorable children running around the house. She does not get a wedding, or a ring, or whispered promises for a big bright future.

But in the end, she does win her freedom. And she doesn't need anything else.


End file.
